[No country has as many
stray dogs as India, and no country
suffers as much from them. Free-roaming dogs number in the tens of millions and
bite millions of people annually, including vast numbers of children. An
estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a
third of the global rabies toll.]
 |
Enrico Fabian for The New York Times
Stray dogs are ever-present in New Delhi. More Photos »
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NEW DELHI —
Victims of the surprise attacks limp into one of this city’s biggest public
hospitals. Among the hundreds on a recent day were children cornered in their
homes, students ambushed on their way to class and old men ambling back from
work.
All told the same
frightening story: stray dogs had bitten them.
Deepak Kumar, 6, had an
angry slash across his back from a dog that charged into his family’s shack.
“We finally closed the
gates to our colony and beat the dog to death,” said Deepak’s father, Rajinder.
No country has as many
stray dogs as India, and no country
suffers as much from them. Free-roaming dogs number in the tens of millions and
bite millions of people annually, including vast numbers of children. An
estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a
third of the global rabies toll.
Packs of strays lurk in
public parks, guard alleyways and street corners and howl nightly in
neighborhoods and villages. Joggers carry bamboo rods to beat them away, and
bicyclists fill their pockets with stones to throw at chasers. Walking a pet
dog here can be akin to swimming with sharks.
A 2001 law forbade the
killing of dogs, and the stray population has increased so much that officials
across the country have expressed alarm.
In Mumbai, where more
than 80,000 people reported being bitten last year, the government plans to
conduct a census of the strays by using motorcycles to chase down dogs and
squirt their fur with ink. A member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly proposed
in June sending strays to China — where dogs are sometimes eaten — after more
than 15,000 people in the state reported being bitten last year. In New Delhi,
officials recently announced an intensified sterilization campaign.
India’s place as the
global center for rabid dogs is an ancient one: the first dog ever infected
with rabies most likely was Indian, said Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the
rabies program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Dog bites cause 99 percent of human rabies deaths.
Indeed, tackling rabies
on the subcontinent is challenging because the relationships that Indian dogs
maintain with humans are ancient. India’s pariah dog, the dominant street
breed, is probably a descendant of an early Chinese immigrant, said Peter
Savolainen, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm. With pointed ears, a wedge-shaped head and a tail that
curls over its back, the pariah is similar in appearance to other prehistoric
dogs like the Australian dingo.
For thousands of years,
dogs’ relationship with humans was similar to that of pilot fish with sharks,
said John Bradshaw, director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University
of Bristol in Britain.
“Dogs essentially
started out as scavengers,” Dr. Bradshaw said. “They evolved to hang around
people rather than to be useful to them.”
While that relationship
has largely disappeared in the developed world, it remains the dominant one in
India, where strays survive on the ubiquitous mounds of garbage. Some are fed
and collared by residents who value them as guards and as companions, albeit
distant ones. Hindus oppose the killing of many kinds of animals.
Malini Jadeja, who lives
in Delhi part time, said she was walking her beloved dog Fudge Cake some years
ago not far from Lodi Gardens when “two dogs came out of nowhere and attacked.”
Fudge Cake was leashed, so he could not run away.
“I tried to grab the
strays and pull them away, but just as I got one, the other would attack,” Ms.
Jadeja said. “They killed Fudge Cake right in front of my eyes.”
She blames herself for
her dog’s death and remains terrified of strays. “It’s very difficult to take a
dog for a walk here because of the attacks from street dogs,” said Dr. Radhey
S. Sharma, president of the Indian Veterinary Association.
Nonetheless, India’s
burgeoning middle class has begun to adopt Western notions of pet ownership,
buying pedigreed dogs and bringing animals into their homes. But many pedigreed
dogs end up on the street, the castoffs of unsuccessful breeders or owners who
tire of the experiment.
Stray dogs are dangerous
not only because of their teeth but also because they help ticks and other
parasites thrive. But animal welfare advocates fervently reject euthanasia, and some warn that reducing
the stray population while doing nothing about the country’s vast mounds of
garbage could be dangerous because rats might thrive in dogs’ place.
“The first thing you
need to start doing to reduce the stray population is manage your garbage
better,” said Arpan Sharma, chief executive of the Federation of Indian Animal
Protection Organizations. “And the second thing is very aggressive spaying,
neutering and vaccinating of animals.”
Jaipur has reduced its
stray population, but it is a lonely exception that overcame not only enormous
logistical and financial challenges but cultural ones as well.
“People really don’t
want us to take the street dogs away, particularly in poor areas,” said Dr.
Jack Reece, a Jaipur veterinarian who helped lead the city’s effort. “In other
areas, especially Muslim ones, they won’t let us release the dogs back. I have
been surrounded by large crowds, angry young men, saying you can’t release the
dogs here, even though they were caught from there two days before.”
More than a dozen
experts interviewed said that India’s stray problem would only get worse until
a canine contraceptive vaccine, now in the lab, became widely and inexpensively
available.
Dr. Rosario Menezes, a
pediatrician from Goa, said that India could not wait that long. Dogs must be
taken off the streets even if that means euthanizing them, he said. “I am for
the right of people to walk the streets without fear of being attacked by packs
of dogs,” he said.
Arshpreet Kaur was 3
when a stray came in through her home’s open front door and bit her and her
grandfather. Within a week, Arshpreet got a headache and then a fever. Her
parents took her to a hospital, but she soon slipped into a coma, in which she
remained for nine years before finally dying.
“There are stray dogs
everywhere in Delhi,” Arshpreet’s mother, Jasmeen Kaur, said in a telephone
interview. “We are more scared of dog bites than anything else.”
Malavika Vyawahare and Niharika Mandhana
contributed reporting.
